Windows iMac runs Photoshop faster than on OS X

One of the biggest hang-ups with the Intel Macs is that there's still software, notably Adobe Photoshop, whose Apple-specific code has not yet been converted to run on Intel-based hardware. Apple's answer was emulation, but the performance in intense content creation apps like Photoshop and Sorensen Squeeze for video editing is ugly. But here in the post-Boot Camp world, Intel-based Apple owners can now have it both ways.

With Windows XP Pro running on a 2.0GHz iMac Core Duo, we ran our Photoshop test in less than half the time it took than with the same system running OS X 10.4.5-- 2 minutes, 49 seconds vs. 6 minutes, 30 seconds to be exact, or a difference of 57%. It's also worth noting that the iMac Core Duo with Windows beat a Pentium D 830-based PCs from Dell and Gateway on Photoshop as well. Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we have Windows-based iMac Core Duo results for the rest of our benchmark tests.